Vietnam veteran, artist to hang haunting portraits of soldiers at Middletown City Hall

Artist’s haunting portraits of soldiers to fill City Hall in permanent installation

Published
12:43 pm EDT, Sunday, July 31, 2016

Middletown artist David Schulz has been commissioned by the city of Middletown to create a 21-foot work of art for council chambers on the Vietnam War in a Pentagon project to mark the 50th anniversary. He is drawing seven panels with portraits depicting the Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Gulf, World War I and II and Korea. less

Middletown artist David Schulz has been commissioned by the city of Middletown to create a 21-foot work of art for council chambers on the Vietnam War in a Pentagon project to mark the 50th anniversary. He is ... more

Photo: Cassandra Day — The Middletown Press

Photo: Cassandra Day — The Middletown Press

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Middletown artist David Schulz has been commissioned by the city of Middletown to create a 21-foot work of art for council chambers on the Vietnam War in a Pentagon project to mark the 50th anniversary. He is drawing seven panels with portraits depicting the Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Gulf, World War I and II and Korea. less

Middletown artist David Schulz has been commissioned by the city of Middletown to create a 21-foot work of art for council chambers on the Vietnam War in a Pentagon project to mark the 50th anniversary. He is ... more

Photo: Cassandra Day — The Middletown Press

Vietnam veteran, artist to hang haunting portraits of soldiers at Middletown City Hall

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MIDDLETOWN >> The eyes are what first draw you in.

Those of an utterly exhausted World War II soldier with a rifle at his back in a camouflage helmet staring at the camera. An Afghanistan war servicewoman in mid-stride, shouldering a 3-year-old girl while gripping the hand of an older girl who shares her smile.

Seven charcoal renderings, each with the ribbons that were handed out to those who served in both world wars — plus Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq — will stand below the words, “All Gave Some, Some Gave All. You are Not Forgotten.”

These individually framed paper-on-wood panels, each 30 inches by 44 inches, flanking a Vietnam-era veterans honor roll and Vietnam quotes from the works of Russell Library’s They Were There writing group members, will soon adorn City Hall Council Chambers on this, the 50th anniversary of the war.

The artist is Vietnam veteran and Middletown resident David Schulz, who many may know from his striking portraits of those he’s met and from commissioned works like that of the late Middletown Area Transit Director Tom Cheeseman in the new station on North Main Street.

They honor those who served during “the longest American war,” which (while undeclared) ran from about 1955 to 1975.

“We are determined to thank and honor our Vietnam veterans for their service, valor and sacrifice more than 50 years ago,” the letter reads.

Schulz, who says he works very quickly, began the project right after the July 5 council meeting and by July 12, he had completed the first panel — a haunting rendering of the WWI soldier.

On July 12, Schulz put the finishing touches on that charcoal in his studio.

When he and his wife Carol bought their home, Schulz converted the sun room at the rear of his home into a studio — featuring his character-driven paintings and drawings of people, including a self-portrait. There’s one of his son’s boss — a brewery owner — with perfectly coiffed hair, a goatee and a face of lean, sharp angles and saucer-sized eyes. “I bought this house for the studio,” he explained.

Schulz, a radio operator who was drafted in 1967 at age 23, carried radios for the battalion commander. “You were also a target. You were walking around with radio out there.” He said the enemy would see a cluster of radio antennas in the jungle and think, “There’s got to be a big shot there.”

When he went in, he was the equivalent of the rank of corporal; he left a sergeant. “Now why I got promoted, I have no idea. ... it was like somebody else was promoting their guys. I don’t know how it happened.”

He was a sergeant for four to five months. In total he served 20½ months. “I managed to survive without a physical scratch or an emotional one,” Schulz said.

When Schulz set out to find inspiration for the project, he immediately conjured up an image of the photos that flashed across the television screen during a 2003 “Nightline” episode. They were interspersed with the names of each of the 721 soldiers killed in the Iraq war in 2003 — read by anchor Ted Koppel.

“I was always drawn to that —looking intently at these face of young people who basically died for no reason at all ... so that became my focus.”

During Vietnam, soldiers served for one year, Schulz explained.

Many were discharged before their 365 days in country had been served, according to Deputy Mayor Bob Santangelo. Television played a large part in what Americans saw of the Vietnam War. “They wanted to show soldiers heading home. What the armed forces didn’t show was the flood of soldiers arriving for duty,” explained Santangelo, a specialist first-class combat veteran who served at an artillery fire base in Phan Thiet in 1969.

“The goal was to stop the spread of communism,” Santangelo said, during the Cold War.

Like many who served in Vietnam, Schulz came back with a wariness of the armed forces. “I’m against the government, what (it does) to young people’s lives, but I’m in no way against the young people. Being a veteran of Vietnam myself, I know what being in war is all about and especially ... in a war where you’re just basically cannon fodder.

“Whether you personally come home is not the issue the government cares about. ... These days, they prefer you didn’t come home because you might come home a basket case. Then they have to provide medical service for the rest of your life ,which could be 60 years.”

That’s why his focus is on soldiers themselves and why he chose portraits. “In almost every image, at least one of the figures is going to be connecting eyeball to eyeball with the viewer,” Schulz explained.

He scoured the internet looking for war photographs that he could use as inspiration. When he settled on them, he tried to contact the wire service photographers that had taken the shots but received no response. Others had no credit, Schulz explained, but in each one, he made them his own by changing the sex, faces or other details of the soldiers. He chose two Native Americans for the Word War one depiction; another is a nurse caring for a soldier during the Korean War and for the Iraq War, a female soldier.

Schulz says he’ll easily finish the artwork by the Sept. 27 opening at City Hall.

Meanwhile, the Middletown Council of Veterans is hoping for more names for the Vietnam-era honor roll. Those who served in the Vietnam era — whether in Vietnam or elsewhere — will be included on the list. Those eligible are former soldiers who lived in Middletown during their time at war or city residents who at some time lived in Middletown following their service.

Information may be sent to the Middletown Council of Veterans, 58 Bernie O’Rourke Drive, Middletown CT 06457, by Aug. 15.